Conversational Agent as a Black Hat: Can Criticising Improve Idea Generation?

Abstract

The Ideate phase of Design Thinking is the source of many idea creations. In this context, criticism is considered a creativity killer, yet recent studies show that criticism can be beneficial. An example of this is the black hat of one creativity method: Six Thinking Hats. It points out the weaknesses of an idea so that they are eliminated by further refining. Previous research shows that conversational agents have an advantage over humans when criticizing because of their perceived neutrality. To investigate this, we developed and implemented a conversational agent and evaluated it using an A/B test. The results of the study show that the prototype is perceived as less neutral when it criticizes. Criticizing by the conversational agent can lead to higher quality ideas. This work contributes to a better understanding of conversational agents in the black hat role as well as of their neutrality.